Dryer appliances generally include a cabinet with a drum rotatably mounted therein. During operation, a motor rotates the drum, e.g., to tumble articles located within a chamber defined by the drum. Dryer appliances also generally include a heater assembly that passes heated air through the chamber in order to dry moisture-laden articles positioned therein. Typically, an air handler or blower is used to urge the flow of heated air from chamber, through a trap duct, and to the exhaust duct where it is exhausted from the dryer appliance. Dryer appliances may further include filter systems for removing foreign materials, such as lint, from passing into the exhaust conduit.
Notably, failure to frequently remove lint that collects in the lint filter may result in impaired dryer performance and may present a fire hazard due to the potential for combustion. Thus, a user of a conventional dryer appliance must typically remove the lint filter prior to each use and manually clear the collected lint from the filter. However, users commonly forget to remove lint prior to each use or otherwise find the process tedious. Certain conventional dryer appliances have systems for automatically removing lint from lint filters, but such system are frequently complex, costly, and largely ineffective at removing lint from the filter.
Accordingly, a dryer appliance and associated methods of operation that facilitate improved lint removal would be desirable. More specifically, a dryer appliance that can receive a lint cleaning vacuum to periodically and automatically clean lint from the lint filter would be particularly beneficial.